


The Art of Destruction

by jolecia



Category: Poldark (TV 2015)
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-11 11:54:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19927660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jolecia/pseuds/jolecia
Summary: Just a short fluffy one shot in which Elizabeth is amused, George is exasperated, and Valentine, as per usual, is an utter menace.





	The Art of Destruction

Warm summer sunlight was filtering through the gap in the heavy drapes covering the narrow windows of the bedchamber when Elizabeth opened her eyes to the realisation that her husband was no longer beside her. She stretched out, stifling a yawn with one hand, and turned on her side, reaching for the empty space where George had been when she had last awoken some time in the small hours of the morning. The rumpled sheets were cold under her touch, and she frowned at the sensation. It was true that George often rose before her, but it was a Sunday, and of late she had been able to persuade him to remain abed with her rather later than usual before they were obliged (rather unenthusiastically in her husband’s case, whom she suspected had not been the most regular of churchgoers when he had lived at Cardew) to head out to St Sawle Church for the morning service. Yet as far as she could tell, he must have been up for some time already, and she wondered if she had perhaps slept so late that he had elected not to wait for her.

She propped herself up on her elbows, glancing around the room. George’s nightshirt and dressing gown were draped neatly over the chair beside the dressing table. Turning her attention to the clock on the mantelpiece, she saw that the face read a quarter past eight. Her frown deepened. That was not so late, even though they were both inclined to rise earlier during the week. So where had he gone? Perhaps, she considered as she pushed herself upright into a sitting position, there had been some matter which he simply could not delay affording his attention to. He was very busy nowadays after all, with the demands of the Bank, the pressure put on his business interests by the war with France and, of course, the responsibilities of his position as magistrate taking up more and more of his time with each day that passed. Still, he usually informed her when he had some particularly pressing task which he needed to complete. Maybe he simply did not wish to disturb her, she supposed as, with a soft knock on the door, their maid, Polly, entered the bedchamber carrying a tray stacked with food and a steaming pot of tea before her. It was remarkably quiet in the corridor outside, but hungry as she was, she disregarded the thought in favour of breaking her fast.

She ate with relish, and once she had dressed, she headed along to the nursery, intending to check on her son. Pushing the door gently open, she saw that it was empty, Valentine’s bed made neatly up by the servants. Well, that would explain the quietness, she thought with a wry smile. At three years old, little Valentine was a very high-spirited boy, and one who was not at all inclined to stay in bed when he was ought. George must have been woken by him, and had taken him downstairs so as not to disturb her—an increasingly common occurrence now that the little boy was not only often highly excitable in the mornings, but also showing all the signs of becoming a proficient escapologist. She smiled at the thought, half in amusement at Valentine’s mischief, half in affection at George’s consideration for her, and headed downstairs in search of her husband and son.

As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she heard the sound of childish laughter coming from the entrance to the parlour. Her shoes clipped lightly on the floor as she headed over to the half-open door, lingering in the hallway so as to peer into the room. She had been correct in her assumptions, she saw. Sitting amid what seemed like a veritable battlefield of wooden skittles, soft puppets and the toy animals that George had brought home from London, sat Valentine, giggling and clapping his small hands together excitedly. Beside him was George, sat cross-legged on the floor with a look of intense concentration etched on his ever-serious face as he straightened out the rather impressively high tower constructed entirely of wooden toy blocks that stood before him.

“This one!” Valentine cried, bouncing up and down on his little bottom as he held out one of the few remaining blocks to his father. George took it with an expression that was a peculiar mixture of weariness and fondness. Elizabeth couldn’t help but smile at the sight—she remembered that particular expression from her own father’s face as a little girl.

“As his lordship commands” George replied drily as he added the new block to the tower, and Valentine fell about laughing.

They continued in this manner until all of the wooden blocks had been piled up on top of the by now rather precarious looking tower. Still watching silently from the doorway, Elizabeth was quite sure that the entire thing would topple over as George very cautiously let go, but despite a rather dangerous wobble as he drew back, it somewhat miraculously remained upright.

That was until Valentine shuffled forward and poked it enthusiastically.

“Careful! It will fall down if you do that.”

“Fall down!”

And with another shove, he sent wooden blocks scattering across the floor as the tower that George had been so careful to keep steady tumbled right over in a heap. For a moment, Elizabeth half expected the little boy to cry, but instead he laughed harder than ever and, seeing the resigned look on her husband’s face as he stared down at the remains of the tower before him, she had to bite her lip to stop herself from joining in herself.

“Again!” Valentine cried, kicking his small feet excitedly.

George sighed.

“Oh, very well,” he said, his lip quirking as if he were fighting to suppress a smile. “But only one more time.”

At his words, Valentine leapt up and began gathering all the scattered wooden blocks into a messy pile. With a soft chuckle, Elizabeth decided it as time she made herself known to them. George turned around at the click of her shoes on the floor, sending her a small smile in greeting as she approached them. His eyes, however, looked a little tired, and she suspected, not for the first time that morning, that Valentine must have awoken him very early indeed.

“Ah, my dear, I trust you slept well?” he asked her warmly from his position on the floor.

“Well enough, thank you, George,” she replied, unable to keep a hint of mischief out of her tone. “I, at least, do not seem to have been up with the birds this morning, which is more than can be said for some here.”

George huffed a laugh at her words and opened his mouth to reply, but whatever he had intended to say was cut off by a jubilant cry of “Mama!”. Valentine, having been intent on collecting all of his wooden blocks, had only just noticed her arrival and, upon doing so, dropped his prize possessions in an instant so that he could hold his arms out to her imploringly. Gathering up her skirts, Elizabeth lowered herself to the floor between her husband and son and, reaching out to him gently, pulled the little boy onto her lap. He beamed up at her, cheerful and mischievous as ever.

“Good morning, my love,” she said. “I see that you have been keeping your papa on his toes this morning. Have you been having lots of fun without me, hmm?”

_“He_ certainly has been,” replied George drily. “As you can see, he has become very adept in the art of destruction. He has been wreaking havoc on my masterpieces for the best part of an hour.”

Despite the fact that Valentine very likely had no idea what a masterpiece was, he quite clearly determined his papa’s meaning from the tone of his voice, and had deemed it to be a cause of utmost hilarity, for he once again collapsed about in delighted giggles from where he was perched on Elizabeth’s lap. George sighed once again, though his chagrin, clearly not intended in all seriousness, only served to make the little boy laugh harder.

“Again! Again!” he cried, pointing to the pile of wooden blocks on the floor.

“Only one more time,” George reminded him patiently. “Perhaps Mama can help us this time as well?”

“Yes!”

They worked together under the command of Valentine, still perched on Elizabeth’s lap like a king issuing orders to his subjects, and soon enough, George was placing the final block atop his latest construction, Valentine practically bouncing up and down in excitement.

“Shall we knock it down together?” she whispered to him, trying in vain to suppress a grin as he nodded enthusiastically. There was something oddly satisfying about pushing it down, not least because of her husband’s indignant squawk of “Elizabeth!”, which had her fighting not to join in with her son’s mischievous cackles.

Valentine was, naturally, disappointed by the end of the game, but a suggestion of a walk in the grounds was enough to divert his attention, and he was soon running off, harried nursemaid in tow as she tried, in vain, to wrestle him into a coat. George watched him go from where he sat beside her with a shake of his head.

“It is the way of little boys,” Elizabeth said with no small degree of amusement as he moved to stand and held out a hand to help her off the floor. “Geoffrey Charles was much the same at that age.”

George raised his eyebrows at her, brushing off some imaginary specks of dust from his tailcoat and glancing down at the mess surrounding them.

“Perhaps so, but I certainly don’t recall being so intent on creating carnage as a child” he said wryly, and Elizabeth, suddenly confronted with an image of a blond, very serious toddler making neat, perfectly aligned pyramids out of wooden blocks, could barely hold back a snort. His eyebrows shot up further, and this time she did not try to suppress the little laugh that escaped her.

“Perhaps next time, we might hope to give Valentine a sister” she replied airily.

George blinked at her.

“Next time?” he asked. There was a hint of uncertainty in his voice, and with a jolt, Elizabeth realised what she had just said. They had never openly discussed the possibility of having another child after Valentine, but the older her two boys grew, the more she found that she longed for a girl to join them. George, too, she suspected, would not object to the prospect—he doted on Valentine, after all, and she was quite certain it would please him to have more children to spoil.

“Yes—I have found of late that I should dearly love to have a daughter,” she admitted, turning to him with soft, hopeful look in her eyes. “Would that not be wonderful?”

He regarded her watchfully for a moment before that small, familiar smile that she had come to so cherish spread its way across his face, and he took her hand in both of his own and brought it to his lips.

“A daughter,” he said. “Yes, I think I should like that. I should like that very much indeed.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


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